


da capo (take it from the top)

by cicak



Series: Enjoying my own work (author's faves) [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Developing Relationship, Happy Ending, Klingon Opera, M/M, opera - Freeform, space gays in space operas loving opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 03:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15877143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cicak/pseuds/cicak
Summary: In which Hugh Culber, opera nerd, falls in love with Paul Stamets, reluctant owner of a lovely voice.





	da capo (take it from the top)

There are a few key moments in Hugh’s life that he will always be able to instantly recall as if they’d only happened yesterday. Being accepted into starfleet medical is of course one of them, there’s nothing quite like getting that message, dancing round the house, being chased by his mother and his tiny sisters, all trying to see what the PADD said because he couldn’t get a word out. His mother printing the message out on the ancient family printer and pinning it to the battered synthesiser. Both his fathers looking so proud they might burst, and the song in his heart that said “I did it, I did it, I did it.”

Then of course, meeting Paul, getting snapped at for not realising that he was humming along to his headphones, caught in Silbvy’s trap once again and being so humiliated and annoyed he decided to go annoy this obnoxious guy up close. Finding out that he couldn’t get close enough. Spending the next two weeks gloriously bickering in the back of that cafe, studying for finals, elbow to elbow, and then another week necking solidly after they finished. The first stage of being utterly, comprehensively, in love.

The third, was utterly embarrassing. He should know better, he’s a card carrying member of the Starfleet Opera Society. He was secretary for the a year he was in San Francisco doing his masters, and spent every Saturday night in a different seat at the Arts center, taking it all in. His favourite aria, on the record, listed under his smiling profile picture on the society’s datanet page, is Una Voce Poco Fa. He doesn’t remember the first time he heard Rosina declare that she will marry Lindoro, she’ll trick the man who is raising her to be his perfect wife and she’ll be a viper and win the day. Difficult, beautiful, confident in its brilliance but always open to reinvention - Rossini’s masterpiece reminds him of Paul. The best version is by Silbvy, the Kaseelian chromatic soprano, who Hugh would go on his knees for, any day, all he’d have to do is whistle. Paul would understand. Actually, Paul’s actual words when told of this were “Where do Kaseelians even keep their dicks?” but Hugh knows that Silbvy would find some use for his benediction, however elaborately tentacled his crotch turns out to be.

Of course, the first time he heard Rosina’s aria, the first time he heard Silbvy open his mouths and sing in perfect, organic harmony, these are important. These are moments he treasures.

The actual third memory, the one that still gives him chills, is the first time he heard Nessun Dorma. He was nine. His family had a holo on to amuse the kids, some detective film that had a scene set in an opera house. A portly man mimed Puccini’s most famous aria as the detective found that he had been outfoxed by the villain. The score swelled, just as the detective stood in the rain, realising he’d been outplayed, and Hugh’s tiny mind was changed forever.

It didn’t hurt that the whole thing was both deeply dramatic, but also deeply homoerotic, and this whole experience was extremely, extremely formative.

Any tenor with even the most basic technique gets a standing ovation for that final note, and of course Hugh knows now how to tell a good Nessun Dorma from a bad one, and also is responsible for the law at SoS that “Puccini was a hack: discuss” is officially never to be debated _ever again_ , neither formally or informally. 

The fourth moment, which wasn’t asked for because no one asks for your four most influential moments in life, was the day Paul, his beautiful, ridiculous partner, someone who was raised without music and never gained any appreciation for it as anything other than background noise, chided from the other room in a beautiful rising tenor the familiar strains of _Nessun Dorma_ , but with entirely different words, 

_“Dearest Doctor!_

_Dearest Doctor!_

_Oh my love will you pick up your fucking socks, seriously!_

_It’s your only flaw, but it irks me so._

_I know it’s hypocritical, but it always drives me mad, how you can, be so fastidious! And yet so…”_

Hugh rounds the corner, skidding on the smooth floor in his haste (socks still firmly on at this point), and Paul stops, the note hanging there.

He gestures encouragingly, and Paul sticks up his middle finger, but finishes the line anyway with a drawn out “gross”, the note resonant and beautiful and utterly, _utterly_ , unfair.

“You can sing.” Hugh says. “You asshole, you can fucking sing. I fucking hate you so much.”

Paul rolls his eyes. “Seriously, pick up your socks. It’s disgusting”, he says, but there’s a little lilt there, and he’s smiling, that smug little smile that says that he knows that Hugh is so turned on he can barely breathe, that he is going to get so laid due to his own brilliance, and who is Hugh to argue with a certified genius?

He picks up the socks first, because one always wants to encourage good behaviour. 

* * *

Hugh can’t sing.

Or more, he can hold a tune, he’s acceptable at karaoke, can express himself in the shower. No one would recoil from his voice, should they hear it. He’s reasonably musical, and has a keen ear. Most people would say that he can sing, that he has a nice voice.

But he can’t do what Paul can do effortlessly. He can’t open his head up, use his diaphragm, vocal chords and skull as a musical instrument. His vibrato is all forced and wrong. If you don’t know what opera sounds like, Hugh might be able to pass, but the moment you hear a real singer, it goes out the window. He’s had lessons. He’s made progress. It’s fine though, he has another hobby now, and it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.

Paul is untrained. He did a bit of choir, bit of musical theatre at school and during university, but his voice just _does that_ when he’s relaxed and warmed up and it is so deeply unfair that someone who doesn’t appreciate the artform is such a natural. He’s got range, he’s got a fucking _trill_ , and worse of all once he realises what it does to Hugh, he abuses it to the point where he could walk into any Starfleet production if he wanted, the kind the top brass go to to nod sagely and appear cultured. It could do so much for his mushrooms, if he wanted to be that kind of person. The fact he isn’t that kind of officer is why Hugh loves him, the fact he just wants to bicker with Straal and talk dirty to his mushrooms to the point that three separate lab technicians have contacted Hugh covertly to warn him that Paul is having an affair with someone called Stella.

And so it was inevitable that Hugh Culber, opera nerd, fell in love with Paul Stamets, reluctant owner of a lovely voice.

* * *

They go to the opera together for the first time just a couple of months after they got together, for Hugh’s birthday. 

Hugh spends weeks agonising over what to choose, debating for hours over back-channels for hours with the rest of the SoS membership. There are eighty productions taking place within transporter range of San Francisco, and they learn about choice paralysis early in the academy, but it doesn’t help.

He picks something that the informal poll deemed to be acceptably accessible in the end, even though he wavers when he sees there’s a pair of tickets released for K’zklat ab Zhfal which almost tips his hand. He’s only ever seen recordings of it, and it’s been sold out for _years_ , and he has a lab fairly early tomorrow which is absolutely not enough time to come down in time, but still, he considers cancelling his romantic birthday date in favour of going because everyone knows modern recording technology cannot even begin to capture the full spectrum of colours that the music generates. There’s also no way Paul will sit through seven hours of musical hallucinations about the formation of the ancient house of Zhfal, no matter how many hallucinogens he would get to take (and Paul only got into mushrooms because he spent his teenage years high as a kite.)

They go to see Orpheus in the Underworld instead (in English, rather than the original French), because ultimately, Hugh is a chicken who _really goddamn likes this guy_ , because he still can’t really believe that he’s managed to have a functional relationship for three whole months, and because everyone loves a farce, especially one that ends with the denizens of hell doing the can-can.

Paul hates it. Even the can-can. Even Public Opinion and her snark and the weird sex stuff and the frankly light amount of mainstream vs opera weirdness considering how utterly farcical the performance is. As a final kick in the teeth, he goes to the bathroom during Hugh’s favourite bit.

When they step out into the bracing cold of Covent Garden and head towards the transporter pad, Hugh is feeling nothing but the mild nausea of having made a terrible decision, and nearly in tears with disappointment as Paul is polite to him about it.

“It’s not even a fucking opera!”, Hugh tells his parents over chat that night. “I chose an operetta for a reason!”

“Offenbach isn’t exactly Gilbert and Sullivan” his father says, bitchily, with the intonation that makes his mother throw things at both of them when they argue about music. “Maybe you should have taken him to see Phantom, if you’re going to hide who you really are.”

“I cannot believe you would insult me so horribly, and on my birthday”, Hugh snaps. “If I wanted abuse I would have not faked a headache and just gone back to Paul’s for a fight like a normal person.” 

There’s silence then.

“You really like him, don’t you?” Papa shouts from off camera.

“God help me” Hugh says, sighing dramatically and falling onto the bed like Tosca to her fate. “I do. I’m in love with a philistine. In love! What cruel fate.”

His parents ring off, and Hugh sits in the semi-darkness of his room, listening to his playlist of endlessly meandering baroque songs of deep and meaningful sadness and necking a bottle of wine he’d stolen from a Starfleet Medical soiree exactly for, if not this occasion, but one extremely like it.

* * *

By their fifth anniversary they’re serving in separate installations, but its still working, against everyone’s expectations. He met Paul’s parents enough now to be comfortably on first name and family-joke terms with them, secretly meets his mother for coffee occasionally when he’s back at Starfleet Medical where she works in one of the enormous, sprawling laboratories by the bay. Paul met his grandparents and came to his baby sister’s coming of age, and together he and Paul took leave and went to Andor, to meet Paul’s sister and her Andorian husband and their baby, impossibly cute with his little antennae sprouting curious from his pale blue head, the Stamets family blue eyes unmistakeable. They explored the cavernous cities of Andor, danced close to the edge at a cliff party, and didn’t kill each other.

Hugh is posted on the Carthaginian while he cross-trains into yet another speciality (he wants to make CMO on something that they can both serve on by 40), and he likes trauma medicine more than he expected. 

The Carthaginian is an enormous ship designed to sit close to the front lines of a war, even though Starfleet is the space coast guard and most of the fleet is comprised of jumped up uniform fetishists who pretend they are in it for the science, no matter how much Paul complains, they are supposed to be prepared for war. 

He and Paul have fought about it - they’ve fought about everything by now, no stone left unturned trying to find something ugly enough to tear them apart. Paul can’t understand why Hugh wants to experience danger, why he doesn’t want to sit in a nice, safe, quiet laboratory, work normal hours, do research and write papers and be a footnote in history rather than a bloody smear across it, a name on a historical manifest. Paul never understands, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. He genuinely doesn’t get it, but he respects it, which is why they’re still together. The distance is hard, millions upon millions of miles and no real-time dirty talk, their relationship pinging across subspace with a delay that keeps them on edge for weeks.

People have asked him why he stays with Paul, who has a reputation for being almost too much of an asshole even for sciences division. He thinks that maybe it would be easier to meet someone less frustrating, less petty, less obnoxiously brilliant, maybe another doctor. To have a future somewhere, where they can be posted together, or work in the same facility. 

He can’t tell them the truth, just says he’s great in the sack. Half the time he doesn’t know the truth anymore, just that he and Paul are tied together, like Rodolpho and Mimi, like Tatiana and Onegin. Even apart, even with other people, they’d still belong to each other. 

* * *

Starbase 23 isn’t the best place for shore leave, being as it is out in the middle of a particularly boring expanse of space, near some very law-abiding colonist farmers. The Starbase is only still there because it’s nearish Klingon space and therefore strategically valuable, but it has the feeling of a soulless truck stop staffed by your parents than a Starfleet or civilian facility. A few places to eat, a couple of bars, a lot of hotel rooms and a bank of fabricators that ask no questions. 

Hugh and Paul have plans to just get a hotel room, a load of junk food from the replicators, and just gorge themselves on each other. There’s a new season of the federation’s hottest trashy reality show ‘Murder on Deck Eight’ burning a hole in his PADD’s storage chip, and they’ve made blow-job bets on which of the ingenue Ensigns is the murderer. 

They’re due to meet at eighteen-hundred, but when Hugh disembarks into the common area of the station, determined to have a shower and a nap before he meets Paul, Paul is already there, looking both smugger and paler under the unforgiving blue lights of the shuttle bay than he seemed over subspace chat the night before when he was doubling down on the Vulcan over the Bolian who Hugh was backing. He’s got a shuttle that looks like he stole it from a scrap yard, so full of patched holes and with most of its insignia alternatively burned and scratched off so that the former owner’s name now spelled something rude in Denobulan. He’s wearing Hugh’s leather jacket, big on his skinny shoulders, his hair slicked back, his pants definitely not regulation.

“Hey sailor.” Paul says, slouching against the hull so that he is looking up at Hugh through his pale lashes. “Fancy a ride?”

Hugh’s fellow officers pretend not to hear as they walk past, and Hugh barely notices he’s so distracted by how turned on and intrigued he is.

They go straight to the shuttle, and after some extremely seedy and cliche roleplay, Paul shoves some civvies at him and instructs him to get dressed. 

Cinta 3 is a Klingon border world, technically affiliated with the Federation, but more of a friends-with-benefits relationship than a true marriage. The world is red and baking hot, dry and desert like, with fine silt swirling around in miniature tornado patterns. 

Paul produces dust masks, goggles and scarves, and hand in hand, they step out.

There are no Klingons here now, but for hundreds of years the people of Cinta 3 and its moon traded with, were conquered by, loved and fought with their neighbours, and like any long-term relationship, it left socks everywhere.

Hand in hand, they wander through the streets, in single file for much of it, just joined by the hands so as not to lose each other. Paul navigating by a cheap, aftermarket nav unit he must have swiped from somewhere, and they pass by gagh vendors and shitty tourist knife merchants for what feels like hours until eventually the tiny alleys open out into a square, and at the centre of the square is a building that could only be an opera house. It could be nothing else. Where opera exists, columns, curlicules and gilding must follow. It towers up into the sky, pennants and banners hanging down proclaiming a performance to be happening. The square is busy with people heading in through the huge arched entryways, pausing to show tickets or buy refreshments or souvenirs. 

They buy tickets at the door, and follow the crowds up a grand staircase, then up, up, up, fewer and fewer people climbing with them until they are in the highest reaches of the impressive dome. The view is dizzying, vertiginous, but exhilarating. The seats are deep and anchoring, which takes the edge off the sheer height. They still have no idea what they are seeing, all of the signs being in the local script, but the stage is enormous, draped in red and gold, the enormous sigil of the house of Kahless familiar from history lessons hanging from the domed ceiling.

The lights dim, and two performers step out, and begin a dance while the orchestra plays an overture.

Over two hours, the immortal love story of Kahless and Lukara played out in enormous, grand detail, and when at the climactic scene, where Kahless and Lukara, drenched in blood and after overcoming many, many dramatic arias, are finally wed with Molor singing counterpoint that he is bringing his armies, is storming their barricades, as they repeat their vows over and over again, and the stage is invaded by a hundred extras, all yelling bloody murder, and the lights go out and the place erupted into applause. Hugh looks over and sees tears in Paul’s eyes, sees the way he is clapping hard and leaping to his feet, and resolves to marry this man as soon as he can.

They make it back from shore leave with moments to spare, having torn around Starbase 23 trying to find a flag officer who would marry two dust-encrusted fools before the clock struck midnight. Their kiss on parting was full of the promise of a swelling orchestra, of the stupid romanticism of myth and music, of star-crossed lovers slaying their enemies by the light of twin moons.

A week later, the battle of the binary stars happens, and Klingons stop being myth and legend and become real again. 

* * *

The Discovery is the first time they’ve ever served together. They’ve lived together, officially, for nearly four years, and unofficially since basically the first time they slept together, but they never worked together on-planet, and never were stationed on the same ships. 

They’re assigned quarters together without question, which should have alerted Hugh to the fact this isn’t a normal ship.

The ship is a testimony to Paul’s genius, built around his theories as an extension of his eternal pissing contest with Straal, and something he is extremely aware and smug about, envisioning how he is going to run the ship on pure science, blissfully annoying right up until he has his first meeting with the Discovery’s captain, Gabriel Lorca.

“They are trolling me” Paul rants, stalking around their quarters with a glass heavy with illicit booze he dug out of their sock drawer. “There’s no way, there must be a joke. To put that...warmonger, that arms dealer, that...fascist, in charge of this ship, just...how, Straal will win, that’s what. This is supposed to be my ship, we are supposed to be...travelling on pure science! But no, we are going to use it to kill people, kill Klingons, kill whoever gets in our way. I can’t believe Starfleet are doing this to me.”

“Who ever said that Starfleet doesn’t think outside the box?” Hugh says, sarcastically. “If this mushroom drive thing fails, we could just push you and the captain together and achieve fusion by colliding your egos.”

“Har, har” Paul says, rolling his eyes. “Of course you would take his side, you’ve been salivating for war for as long as I’ve known you. Must be nice to have some real trauma to work on, really get your hands dirty”.

Hugh’s mind goes blank for a moment, that’s how shocked and offended he is. There aren’t even words. He gets up, and walks towards the door without saying another word.

Paul darts in front of him, sorry on his whisky-wet lips, but Hugh doesn’t want to hear it.

“Sorry, there’s not enough room for me, you and your ego here. Let me know once one of you leaves, until then, I’m going.” 

Paul is incandescently sardonic. “Well there’s never been enough room for you, my ears and your opera collection, but we’ve made it work so far, doctor-mine”

Hugh pushes him out fo the way, reaching for the keypad to the room to disengage the lock. They were expecting to have sex, goddamnit. He disengages the lock, and pauses, turning back to look at Paul. 

“Computer, play Silbvy playlist 1, medical override Culber Three Six Nine Alpha” he shouts, presses the door-close button, and runs, and the beautiful chromatic strains echo after him, interspersed with Paul yelling “COMPUTER, BELAY THAT. CANCEL THAT, DAMNIT HUGH”.

He sleeps in sickbay for a week until a spate of injuries cause them to need all the beds, and because Saru comes and tells him that there have been a record number of complaints against Paul and his foul mood, and that their neighbours have complained about the noise coming from their abandoned quarters, and if Hugh did not go and fix it, Saru would be forced to tell the Captain, and the Captain is extremely busy at the moment and has a full schedule of brooding manfully and bringing Starfleet into disrepute planned, and has no time to intervene in lovers’ spats.

He didn’t say that exactly, but the gist was clear. 

Paul apologises, and they talk about their feelings like the adults they are, but Discovery is changing Paul in ways Hugh doesn’t like. He’s always been an asshole, but his heart of gold is proving to maybe just be electroplated rather than solid, and the abrasiveness of active duty is making him harder to deal with.

They still love each other, and Hugh still wants to marry him more than he wants to throw him out of an airlock, but every day on the ship is harder than the last, for both of them. Hugh hates Lorca, hates the nasty, corrupt side of Starfleet he hasn't had to interact with before. The CMO is rarely around, leaving Hugh and the other junior medical staff to run the sickbay. They’re understaffed and the rota is dangerously unbalanced, but the CMO continually neglects to fix it, despite claiming he will look into it, that it's his utmost priority. Hugh spends at least one shift a week as the only doctor on duty, and often barely has adequate nurse cover. 

When he asks for a reason for why everything has turned to shit he’s condescended to; told that they’re at war, that resources are tight, that Discovery is operating behind enemy lines, and they are low on all essential staff. That he needs to take it up with the CMO, if he has a formal problem. That he needs to do his job, and stop poking his head where it doesn’t belong. That he needs to do what he’s told, even if that is animal abuse, is unethical, is illegal. This is war. Nothing else matters.

And then Paul injects himself with Tardigrade DNA and saves the day, and it all changes again, for a small while, an oasis of calm in a warzone. Paul is holiday-Paul, relaxed, charming and funny, and for a while the Discovery feels like a normal Starfleet vessel. Of course, being the Discovery, it all goes to shit extremely quickly, and suddenly they’re in another universe, Paul is catatonic, and everything that was already awful gets a whole metric ton worse.

Hugh is professional. He’s a fucking Starfleet Lieutenant. He was trained to respect the chain of command, to believe that he might not have the whole story and to not disobey orders. 

He’s taught that despite this, sentient beings aren’t perfect, that it is his responsibility to stand up for what is right, and to ensure that patient safety is paramount. He has enhanced powers over other officers, and he should use them, but not abuse them.

He’s exhausted. Paul is dying, perhaps lost forever in the mycelial web, and he feels like he’s an open wound rather than a man these days. So when Lieutenant Tyler catches him on the dead shift in the middle of ship’s night, pressing him for clearance because they’re in another fucking universe, and Hugh forgot for a moment that Tyler is utterly broken and Hugh should have fucking hypoed him the moment he saw the flop sweat on his brow, should have had him arrested once he saw the horrendous mutilation of his body, the kind of thing that could never happen to a human. 

Instead, he tries to deal with it, tries to take another burden onto his shoulders, and his last moments are spent with slow-motion realisation of what was about to happen and the knowledge that Paul was right there, glassy eyes fixed right on him, and the feel of the brutal, inhuman strength of Tyler’s hands around his throat.

* * *

Hugh wakes up in the afterlife. 

This, in itself, was a surprise.

After a brief period of reflection, which involved screaming, crying, vomiting and frantically feeling his neck to be sure it is still intact, all things that it turns out are possible to do in the afterlife, good to know, Hugh takes stock of the situation.

On one hand, he’s dead, Ash Tyler is a Klingon spy, Paul saw the whole thing, and turns out there is life after death, and the afterlife looks like the Discovery.

On the other hand, at least there are no Valkyries, which is good because Hugh hates Wagner even more than people who pretend they are too good for Puccini.

He takes time to open the door, but there’s no bright light, no ancient texts, just the quiet, unending corridors of the Discovery, bathed in wholly unnatural natural light. 

He walks for hours, the ship recursing on itself. Everywhere leads to where he thinks it leads, he doesn’t get lost, but it also doesn’t make any sense. He is the only one there, but it doesn’t feel empty. The ship feels like a room someone just stepped out of for a minute, like they could be back any second now.

There is no hunger here, but he forces himself to go to the mess and eat. He chooses the chicken salad, his inadvertent last meal, closes his eyes, and replays the last time he ate it. He hears, for a moment, the hubbub of the mess, the musical sound of Tilly’s laughter as it jumps around the circle of fifths. 

When he opens his eyes, they’re gone, and his plate is empty but for a smear of dressing against the rim.

He isn’t tired, isn’t anything, but he goes into their rooms and lies down. Tries to imagine Paul in the shuttle on the way to Cinta 3, but all he can picture is Paul as he last saw him - milky-white eyes, slack, vacant face, and it’s horrible enough to make him open his eyes, finding himself to no longer be alone. The famed Kaseelian soprano Silbvy is in bed with him.

 

Silvby opens his mouth, and a mournful noise comes out and Hugh immediately recognises it as the sound of madness, the glass harmonica from the mad scene in Lucia di Lammermoor. He closes his eyes again , and imagines Silbvy’s performance, singing both the lines of Lucia’s madness at being tricked, betrayed, abandoned and being forced to become a murderess, forced to face her death, remembers all the times he’d listened to it, and lets the tears fall down his face.

Silbvy traces the lines of the tears with his alien hands that have whorls like Paul’s, and as the music swells into anger, into madness from grief, Hugh gets up, the world falling away. 

He steps through a door, furious, and finds himself in the cafe where they met. He sees himself humming along to Silbvy, and sees Paul lose his temper. Sees the moment where it all started and feels time slow down to a single decision: does he go rile up this weird looking stranger? Or just apologise and move on.

He remembers so clearly the thought processes that happened then. He had a lot of studying to do. He had wasted so much time that day just fucking around on the commnet, looking at various newsgroups and finding a download site that had the newest Silbvy recording that hadn’t yet been taken down. His xenoanatomy reader was at his elbow, half the questions unanswered. The exam was soon. He didn’t have the time to mess with assholes, however fun and handsome they were. 

Hugh watched his past self make the decision and felt his heart stop all over again. Saw him make the _wrong_ decision, saw him murmur sorry and pick up the xenoanatomy reader and felt his blood run cold. In that moment he felt instinctively what the afterlife was trying to do, what the whole point of this vision was, was to course correct him back to the world of the living. To give him a second chance.

Self-preservation is the most human of instincts; given the chance he should see what would happen, see the life he would have led had he just let that asshole in the cafe go, instead of going to him, loving him, dying for him. But if there’s one thing Hugh has learned from opera, it’s that when the music swells and it is time for your solo, you have no option but to choose the path of true love, however doomed it is.

He steps forward and sits down next to Paul, feeling himself regress, slide into the skin of his younger self like slipping into an old, worn sweater, takes a deep breath, and takes it from the top.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Star Trek, and I love opera, and I love the way Star Trek loves opera.  
> This story is as much a love song to opera as much as it is a love song to Hugh Culber, the only sane man on the discovery. Hugh and I share tastes in opera - I love Offenbach, Rossini and Donizetti, hate Lloyd Webber with a passion and stan Puccini even though I know he was a bit of a hack. My own personal Silvby is Beverly Sills, in my opinion the greatest coloratura soprano the world has ever seen. Her Una Voce Poco Fa is so incredible it has ruined me for all other Rosinas.
> 
> I'm currently in PhD hell so not doing social media much, but I'm cicaklah on tumblr, chicketychak on twitter, and cicak on pillowfort. Come say hi!


End file.
